Tag Archives: predators

I like beautiful music and although I prefer music over song, either can be from any era, just as long as it is beautiful to my ears and it moves me. So I was listening to Lakme, part I, The Flower Duet (in this case performed by Anna Netrebko and Elina Garanca – See YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vf42IP__ipw)

…And I was thinking, again, about Earth and about “Man” as Earth’s current lord and master. I was thinking of a line by Carl Sagan in “Contact”: ‘You are capable of such beauty, and such horror.” (Quoting from memory but the gist is here)

Whenever I engage myself, mind-wise, on Earthian matters, I get confused as to how I should approach it. Is it “you” and me as the cosmic observer, or should I include myself in among the observed? How do I decide this? First, I must be sure it isn’t a matter of hubris; that if my observation runs into negative judgment, that if I remove myself it isn’t in any way because I think I’m superior to the rest of Earthianity, but because I no longer think, speak or act as most of “you” do. This process, this judgment, must be impeccable on my part.

I believe it is, therefore I am going to be the observer and use the “you” though certainly in the generic sense. I do not know “you” as individuals, therefore it will be according to your conscience whether you “fit in” or can truthfully remain outside the picture. For you, today, I will once again take up the role of the Trojan prophetess Cassandra and say things you will not find acceptable.

You are capable of great beauty… certainly, and the piece of music I mention above proves it even by itself. You don’t have to be able to write, play or sing such, you just have to be able to listen to it and have the capacity to let it enter you and fill you and for the three or four minutes it takes, let it displace all other thoughts, feelings and emotions. Simple, really.

The problem however is that too often it seems impossible to let go. The “immediate” presses upon the mind and demands full attention. That immediate could be anything from the most pleasurable to the greatest pain or loss. The mind-heart refuses to let go of its current obsession driven by anticipation or the immediacy of physical or mental pain.

Earth is not a place conducive to an overall sense of peace, comfort and wholesome satisfaction. Even in the most remote corners, surrounded by nothing but nature, unless one is blind, the reality of the turmoil taking place in the skies, the seas, the trees, the soil, impinges on one’s awareness: predators, everywhere. You see, your world’s natural motive force is based on predatorship or perhaps I should coin a word here: predatorism, because in fact that is the concept that rules Earth. Some are born to kill, many, many more are born to be killed, eaten or absorbed into the natural fabric, their lives cut down long before they can complete their natural cycle. Even your great mountains are worn away by waters and passing winds.

I realize that most of you do not engage your world this way. You do not sense this, though you may be vaguely aware of it, and you generally shrug it off, or use it as an excuse for indulging in what Sagan called, “great horror.” You call it the food chain, and that’s that, as if somehow that explains it away. As if that same nature you want to wax poetic about can also be the brutal barbaric entity that supports your convenient food chain. As if there is no unacceptable dichotomy here, no problem.

That’s the problem, you see, the fact that you don’t see a problem with how nature works. You don’t see a problem because you don’t realize the direct relationship with your own social failures: your wars, genocides, social injustices of every possible kind juxtaposed with those of the world you happen to be temporarily using as a base because… you have no choice: you can’t get away, and if you could, you would have no clue where to go. Some of you feel that your species is a failure, but how many see your world’s “procession” as an equally and connected abysmal failure?

I feel both, the horror that is the working natural system of this world, and the greater horror that is an intelligent, sentient, self aware (ISSA) species calling itself “mankind” that refuses to question the modus operandi of its natural world; refuses to question its own modus operandi; refuses the simple expedient of connecting the dots in order to realize why things are as they are and why no lasting (real) solution to man’s social problems has ever come forth. The only times some significant change has ever happened was through the exercise of violence. That true statement should make any rational being stop and take note: why must it require violence to make significant change within the social structure, and why is it that any and all such changes have failed and are in the process of failing right now?

To me that would be the “why?” question of all the “why?” questions. Why do you always fail? Look, even now, while shooting off on all kinds of tangents based on IT and AI, you are helplessly realizing that this technology is quite likely going to supplant you, perhaps destroy you as ISSA beings. Barely has the technology begun that already you know without a doubt that some way or another it is going to bite you in the ass, and that severely so.

You see? There is no win-win here, not under the current hegemony; the current “force” or “power” that operates this planet. You, people of earth, are not that force or that power, but its slave species. There, I’ve said it, and but for rare exceptions, that is not something you will find acceptable, therefore you will find it necessary to reject the thought outright. If you did not, guess what? You would be forced to look into this in depth and who knows where that would lead? To confront your real nemesis?

No. I can easily tell you where it would lead: back to organized religion. Without self empowerment; without the power to cancel out all input and replace it all with your own thoughts, your own self-made ISSA reasoning, the forces or powers I speak of, will seem to smile in your brain. They will prod you along, with fine words or goads, down the chute into a ready-made religion that will, of course, explain it all. You will then accept the “new” ideas this “new” religion programs into your mind and who knows? It could explain how the AI is a divine power, or it could just as easily make you believe that the time has come to launch a “revolution” against science and technology and you will go off to destroy all vestiges of science and technology, mindlessly following the dictates of a few madmen who will tell you they are “making the Earth great again.”

Either way, you see, you’re not your own person: you are an actor, a puppet, a robot because you are not in control of your own mind. So you will go along (or you will be of those who will violently oppose the barbarians) and indulge in much, much more horror and under your feet, in the seas, in the trees and in the air, predators will continue to kill and eat, and billions of lifeforms will die premature deaths in attempts to sate the hunger of an insatiable system – as Costello would say, “Same as you!”

Quote: “Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty- five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.” (Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt)

I know that most people have little time to engage another’s perambulations of mind in the worlds of various dysfunctions. My own oft repeated inner voice says, ‘hey, come on, deal with it, don’t keep regurgitating it in your articles on your blog.’ and sure enough eventually I find that ‘enough is enough’ and I unfollow. I can’t just “Like” something I really don’t like.

That being said, I’m going to do just that: talk about a feeling. Here’s to hoping it isn’t just me, but that it will strike a chord with some who follow this blog. If I do my job right, the words should express a communal angst, not a personal condition which I would not ask anyone else to share in, that in my opinion being a violation of another’s freedom. If I feel “bad” while you feel “good” then that’s how it is. I have no intrinsic right to impose “my bad” on “your good.”

Moving along, I gave myself a gift today: an entire day to blogging. For a change, reading through the thoughts, articles and comments and attempting to engage honestly, commenting as I felt appropriate, and checking out offered links to related articles, blogs, etc. I even ended up adding a couple of “Follow” to my collection. Much was about our socio-political conditions and situations, specifically here in North America. We could honestly say, “We have a situation here, please respond!”

The upshot of this engagement is that having “cleared” all my email traffic and blogging demands, I feel drained. Empty. Heavy, as if I’d been wrung out but not hung up to dry, just left in the laundry basket as is. I remember going through the same feeling time after time when alone on the River, choosing to spend a longer than usual time between sunrise and sunset, or later, after sunset, to feel the changes in temperature; to hear the difference in sounds of the breezes in the coarse grasses and willows, or the wavelets lapping against the wet mud or sand of the shoreline; to notice changes in the calls of the gulls as they gather by the hundreds to flock upon islets to spend a night safe from marauding coyotes and other predators; to see the beavers emerging from their hideouts in the bushes and begin feeding along the river banks; to watch as the skies darken and high clouds dissipate so the crescent moon can shine…

It’s difficult to clearly express such a feeling. It’s recognizing myself as a passenger on a ship; an alien and stranger made welcome but perhaps not entirely. It’s recognizing I have no roots here, and experiencing, if only for a moment, that effect of alienation. I’m a watcher; a collector of facts; an observer, not a resident; not a member. A free lance journalist in a very foreign land entirely self supporting and at the mercy of local conditions. This “land” doesn’t know I exist, or if it did it may well resent my presence enough to ensure I disappear.

It is more than that. It is possessing something that the condition of the ship dictates I should not have packed with me: empathy. Contraband, with its constant painful reminder that being empathetic on a world ruled by violence is not desirable. It’s like a migraine headache combined with the flu. To say it’s uncomfortable would be an understatement.

From Lisa Palmer, The Otherhood of One, “Every time I tried to meditate, or lately sleep, I was assaulted with disturbing and/or terrifying imagery; “lost” strangers, animals suffering and dying, the Earth moaning under inconceivable destructive pressures, snipers taking aim at people, and most recently, babies being tortured.”

For the empath, this is what happens when we allow ourselves to absorb information without venting it out. It creates a blockage within that translates as a bottomless pit of pain and would soon lead to despair if we didn’t deal with it. Sadly there are many empaths captured within the densities of this planet who don’t know how to deal with feelings they have attracted to themselves through observation.

Earth as a destination of temporary abode is not friendly to empaths. It’s not the actual planet, but it’s programming. You have something here that is absolutely terrifying, incomprehensible and destructive to all empaths and of course to all victims of this thing. It is called predation. This world functions within an obsolete operating system that demands life for life. Life on earth is split between being victim, as in food; and that which survives by killing and eating others. Not only is man not immune to this but is the species that uses the concept more than any other. Man is the king of predators. Not only does he kill other life for food, pleasure, and entertainment, but makes a great show of killing millions of his own species for profit and often, for pleasure. Sadly for the victims of the predator their only “defence” is to become prolific in numbers, thus exacerbating their eternal pain.

Any “starfarer” who happens to dwell for a time on this world would tell you this is a totally obsolete concept. In fact deep down you all know this. Yet it seems it cannot be shaken. Somehow there’s always an excuse ready to be spouted to justify killing, whether it’s from the hunter, the “snagger” fisherman, the “farmer,” the butcher, or the spokesperson for the military industrial complex. Predatory killing is part and parcel of this world’s modus operandi and those who rule it are not going to consider other ways as long as their way is profitable and feeds them power which they need not obtain through their own efforts.

For the empath, there is no comfort available anywhere on this world. It’s sickness is ubiquitous. The final solution is departure.

Meanwhile, one must process the information, store and divest the mind of its presence. File and forget, day after day after day. But in order to make sense of this before it goes in deep storage it is periodically necessary to stand and just feel. Put up with the terrible discomfort of one’s mind residing temporarily in a small but intensely, excruciatingly painful hell.